


On The Bright Side

by deathmallow



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Post 2x08, What Have I Done, fake married trope ftw, kissing for the sake of the mission trope also ftw, started out as a crack AU idea and is maybe actually halfway plausible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-14 02:41:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14761043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathmallow/pseuds/deathmallow
Summary: Carol thinks Lucy's taste in men is appalling, and what appears to be her latest choice is no exception.  Takes place immediately 2x08.





	On The Bright Side

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by the realization on Tumblr that Carol's throwing shade at Lucy's appalling taste in men in 2x10 gets 500% funnier if she thinks Lucy moved from Wyatt to Flynn. 
> 
> I own nothing, etc.
> 
> Title is because in this, Carol is totally Mrs. Brightside. ;)

She glanced over at Flynn and saw the nervous energy in him. “Rufus and Wyatt will be fine. They'll find a way to charge the Lifeboat,” Lucy said, peering over the wall down to the street below. It was more to reassure herself than anything, but at least it was having some success there.

“Easy. They’ll steal a car and use the battery,” Flynn answered. “It won’t be pretty, but by the time you and I are done here, it’ll get us the charge to get home.”

“True, at least it’s not trying to cobble together a solution in 1754.” But she was smiling as she said it. 

“OK, I deserved that,” he muttered in reply. “Due credit to Rufus for figuring it out and getting you back. I never faulted you three on your resilience, you know.” 

Her eyes swept over the street, watching the woman in a red jacket standing there reading a sign and consulting a language book with the look of a confused tourist. "So that's her. You're sure of this?"

“Making a jump barely a couple hours after you come back from saving Agent Christopher, when they assumed the Lifeboat was dead in the water and recharging, and coming here? Got anything else it could be?”

"No," she had to admit. Zagreb, currently in Yugoslavia, eventually to be independent Croatia, on October 17th, 1973 didn’t ring a bell. The Croatian Spring political movement had peaked already, and besides, she couldn't see sharp American ripple effects there as the angle always was with overseas missions: Flynn going after Lindbergh and Von Braun, Rittenhouse saving Nicholas Keynes, and the like.

"Nothing significant happened today in Zagreb, but my mother and father met," Flynn said curtly, half-crouched beside her. He nodded his head towards the woman in her bright jacket. "Enter Maria Parker Thompkins, American woman newly arrived as a defense contractor, misdirected due to mispronouncing a street name, rendered visibly out of place and vulnerable, almost gets mugged, enter gallant off duty police officer Asher Flynn to the rescue." His tongue peeked out, wetting his lips as she'd noticed he did out of nervous habit. The idea of barely missing being snuffed out of existence at any moment would do it. "Knowing Rittenhouse, they'll kill one or both of them to make sure of things. No loose ends. And they imagine we couldn't follow them yet, so they probably think I’m sitting there in 2018 just waiting to be erased."

“Like Rufus said--we’re lucky we had a little extra juice given we only went back to ‘81, and this time only needed to go to ‘73.” It had still been a near-crash landing for all that. 

He leaned his elbows on the wall too, intently looking up the street. “Mason’s team refined those power use equations after she was gone. That’s what Emma gets for playing hooky to her little frontier Unabomber cabin.” 

She watched Maria turn another page in the book, look over her shoulder, give what looked like an exasperated sigh. "Really doesn't seem fair that both the NSA and Rittenhouse have now come up with the idea of going after your mother." Wyatt and Rufus had cheerfully volunteered to get the Lifeboat charged. Probably better that way--Flynn had dryly assured them he and Lucy could handle it, plus he was about as safe as he could be, since they’d hurried enough that he’d made it here to 1973. Even if they failed, all traces of his existence might be erased in the future, but he’d still exist as a person. Like when they’d talked about Gabriel, it still made her head spin to try to consider all the implications, though. His wife would have still existed, albeit not as his wife, and his daughter--no, time to focus on the mission at hand.

Flynn gave a sharp bark of laughter. "I'm only surprised it took either of them so long to pull out the idea. Jake Neville never did like being crossed, and, well, even Wyatt did the same thing to Wes Gilliam, didn't he?" She winced, wanting to defend Wyatt, point out that he obviously hadn't intended Joel Bender to die. But dead was dead, accidental or not, and an innocent man had died. 

“Guess they figured if they couldn’t take out Christopher, they’d try to take you out before we could follow them.”

“Yes, yes, I never exist and never find Rittenhouse’s dirty financials, and none of this ever happens. Really, I'd prefer they went after my father. He wouldn’t be missed.”

Watching Maria as she was, looking for the agent--they wouldn’t have bothered with a sleeper for this, would they? She couldn’t help but admire the architecture, with the juxtaposition of graceful buildings with the weight of history crowding shoulder-to-shoulder with modern and also Soviet-style utilitarian, with the green and rolling hills in the distance. “This is an interesting city.”

“Dad’s just on holiday today. He’s from Split, on the coast. I was born there, grew up there. Beautiful, and old enough to keep a history nerd like you busy. The Palace of Diocletian--” She glanced over at him, hearing the warmth in his voice, and ended up smiling in spite of herself, imagining an ancient city by the sea. 

Then a voice came behind them asking a question in another language, and she looked over her shoulder to see a police officer there, regarding them with a mingled curiosity and suspicion in blue eyes over a bushy grey mustache. Seeing two people crouched by a stone wall, looking down at the street below--they didn’t exactly look like tourists. Flynn didn’t even have to say it: _follow my lead_. Not the least because she knew only about five words of Croatian, and those were from asking Flynn to teach her some curses.

Standing and turning, she let him do the talking in rapid-fire Croatian. _Mihajlo Rajković_ , he gestured at her, _žena Laura_. She could see the police officer start to relax, and give a low chuckle, nodding and giving Flynn an avuncular grin. “Now,” Flynn said, switching smoothly back to English and giving her a look of total adoration and concern, “I was just explaining to Officer Karabajić how we took leave from our jobs in America to finally bring my wife to visit my family. But Laura, darling, I’m concerned about you and the baby--you’re never prone to dizzy spells like this.” Still explaining it to her, likely guarding against the chances that the police officer spoke some English, and drawing her into their ruse.

The fragile pregnant wife? It was all she could do to not roll her eyes at him. But then she realized it was the perfect cover. Of course. A dizzy pregnant woman kneeling on the cobbles, leaning on the wall for support, and her concerned husband crouched there beside her. She gave him her warmest, most affectionate smile in return. “Michael," because that was the English version of "Mihajlo", and an American wife would probably use it as a fond pet name, "sweetheart, you worry too much. I’m fine.” She touched her stomach gently with her left hand. She chewed her lip thoughtfully, shook her head slightly as if to clear the last fuzzy haze from it. “I’m sure it was just the long trip, between the dizziness and the way my fingers have swelled--” Thinking fast, spying the thin silver band still on Flynn’s finger and realizing her own was pointedly bare, she held up her left hand and tapped that finger for both Flynn and the police officer to see. Thank her mom for that one, complaining-slash-fondly-reminiscing about how her fingers swelled so much during her pregnancy with Amy that she’d had to take her wedding ring off. “I miss my ring, you know.” She gave him a look that promised she was anything but a fragile pregnant wife, and she could hardly wait to get him alone.

He chuckled lowly. “I know, _ljubavi,_ I know.” He turned back to Karabajić who laughed, gave them what she imagined was a hearty Croatian congratulations, still looking at Lucy with a gentle concern, and it was in that moment that she spied the big bear of a man walking along the wall, starting to watch the scene there with some suspicion in a way she’d seen before. The way that someone obviously wasn’t just gawking, but that active, intent stare of assessing whether the threat was there.

No time to delay. She'd have to give them something to defuse the suspicion. She stepped closer to Flynn, stood on her tiptoes, got her left hand behind his neck to help pull his head down to hers--why did he have to be so damn _tall_ \--her right braced on his chest, and laid a kiss right on him. Just a brief one, like any couple might exchange virtually everyday. He tensed for half a second as if she’d hit him with a lightning bolt, and she hadn't ever really pondered the implications of a grieving man on the run pursuing a vendetta but now would lay any odds he hadn’t been kissed by a woman since Lorena, had probably barely been touched at all. She had the oddest worry that maybe she’d taken something from him she hadn’t even realized, so she moved her mouth from his, brushing her lips across his cheek instead in apology. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, suddenly wanting to wrap her arms around him in earnest.

“S’all right,” he murmured back a little unsteadily, his breath stirring warm against her skin in a way that set her stomach fluttering. “You saw the Rittenhouse agent?” His focus was back, sharp and intent. His hands rested on on her shoulders, holding her in place in what would look like a gentle fond moment of two lovers pressed cheek to cheek. She heard Karabajić finally move away, laughing softly to himself with that _kids these days and their damn PDA_ tone.

“Yes. I mean--I think so.” Almost uncanny how easily they could follow each others’ lead without explanation. _Quite the team one day_. Barely a few hours ago he’d told her that some future version of herself gave him that journal. Basically kept him from killing himself by giving him a way to fight back. She still hadn’t had time to think any of that through, given she’d still been standing there in his room when the alarm sounded. 

“Good. Then let’s go get this done.” He let her go.

It took only another hour, and then there was a body in a Zagreb alley, yet another John Doe left dead in the past. Or whatever “John” was in Croatian, but she didn’t want to ask Flynn that. She hoped that Karabajić wouldn’t be the one to find the scene. He’d seemed kind. They watched from a cafe across the street when Maria Thompkins got almost mugged, and the tall man with dirty blond hair, presumably one Ilija "Asher" Flynn, chased down the man for her, then came back to check on her. “Job done, I see,” Flynn said, not really watching to see the conversation take place between Maria and Asher. “Let’s go home.”

“You don’t want to--”

He shook his head. “She already saw me in Houston in ‘69. We talked, and I saved Gabriel. She would remember my face. Also me telling her--something about remembering her. It would be hard to explain why we ran into each other again halfway across the world 4 years later, and to explain what I told her then.”

They headed back towards the Lifeboat, oddly solemn. Whether it was that kiss, or all the messed-up stuff with his parents, or both, she couldn’t know. She couldn’t help but remember how they’d come back from saving Robert Johnson in San Antonio all laughing and lighthearted, or even the suffragette rally with the sense of a job well done. “Maybe I should go see Split someday,” she offered him that olive branch, hoping to get him talking again. “I could use a good guide, though.”

Now he smiled again, looking right at her, and it soothed something within her to see it. “I’d love to, but I might have a hard time getting through the TSA these days.”

She couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Well, we _do_ have a time machine.”

“Oh, we can sign it out for recreational trips now? Agent Christopher must really be in a terrific mood.”

Rufus and Wyatt had gotten the battery, and with a few complaints and jokes from them about saving Flynn, they got in the Lifeboat. It was a bumpy ride back, but Rufus assured them they’d make it, and as ever, their faith in his abilities proved well founded.

Back at Home Sweet Bunker, Flynn nodded to her as they headed for their separate rooms. She debated whether he might want to talk tonight again, or whether it was better to leave him to his thoughts.

Her phone rang just then. Getting calls became rarer and rarer--explaining that she was on sabbatical in Europe researching the evolution of the Terror and its shape on the fledgling American democracy and giving a pointed _the less you ask about it the better_ \--had done most of it. When was the last call she’d gotten? Her birthday, probably, though they’d mostly texted.

Unknown number. Could be a robo-spam dialer. Could be someone with information about Rittenhouse. She answered the phone. “Hello?”

“Lucy.” 

She realized only after she did it how her arms instinctively crossed across her chest. “Hello, Mom. So who’s next on the chopping block--me?”

Carol sounded actually hurt herself as she said, “You know I would never hurt you.”

“No, you’d just hold me prisoner until I finally drink the Rittenhouse Kool-Aid.”

“It was Flavor-Aid, actually. Grape.”

She pressed her lips together tightly, unable to put up with Carol Preston playing “historian one-up” as ever to score the point and put her daughter in her place. Red pen on her essays, heaps of books deposited on her nightstand on weekends and vacations, the criticism and comments and constant undercutting. _Not good enough, Lucy. Do it again._ “So go drink some of it for the research. I don’t care.”

“Lucy, I only want what’s best for you. And--Wyatt Logan was bad enough, but Garcia Flynn? I know you're prone to making terrible decisions when you're down in the dumps, but really--”

She could have sworn a red haze flickered through her vision then. “You were there? In Zagreb? Spying on me?” She must have acted it well if even her mother thought that kiss was genuine.

“Of course I wasn’t. I can’t go back to a time I already exist, and I certainly existed in 1973.” Lucy closed her eyes, letting her head thunk back against the bunker wall, not wanting to acknowledge that point scored, and how upset she was that she hadn’t immediately thought of it. “But I saw pictures.”

“How did you--” No, she didn’t want to know when, how or why, and whether that was Rittenhouse or all Carol. 

Carol paused. “That was Emma, not me, by the way. But if you’re not careful, Lucy, you’ll end up on Interpol’s list also. A picture taken in Zagreb in 1973 with a modern camera can very easily look like 2018. And regardless of the year, pictures of you kissing an escaped terrorist…”

The implied threat sparked her temper further, fingers clenching tightly around the phone. “Garcia Flynn is what Rittenhouse has made him,” she snapped, wanting suddenly to throw the phone and have the satisfaction of watching it shatter against the wall. “Does it strike you how _insane_ it is that you’re stalking your thirty-five year old daughter, Mom? Who I kiss, who I screw,” deliberately using a cruder term, “is my business, so you need to keep your damn nose out of it.” _Between you and Wyatt, I swear…_

She had a brief thought then of marching directly down the hallway to Flynn’s room, and fucking him senseless. Take a few pictures of them in bed together just to send to Carol, and for a moment, she felt the hot satisfaction at that idea. That, and something stirred within her, something low and fierce and hungry, imagining those green eyes gone dark and half-closed in pleasure, that voice saying her name lowly in her ear, the vowel drawn out as he did. _Loo-cy. Ljubavi._ If she was honest, not the first time she'd imagined it by far, though usually it was a restless dream rather than a waking fantasy. 

Remembering that endearment, though, and the repressed startled reaction from him at her playacting kiss drained her anger like poison. Rittenhouse used people, and threw them away like trash. Flynn was her--ally? Friend? Confidante? Confessor? Something, anyway, something real and something that deeply mattered, and she couldn’t hurt him like that. “Or is your only real concern about who’s fathering my kid? Gotta keep that precious David Rittenhouse heritage pure.” Noah might not have been Rittenhouse--yet--but his bloodlines were apparently impeccable. No wonder he'd had Carol's approval to marry Lucy.

“Lucy…” Carol’s voice lowered to barely a whisper. “One of those pictures. You had your hand on your stomach. Are you telling me…you and Flynn...”

That savage feeling of victory filled her chest again. She could score her own point here, leave Carol the one clueless, insecure, and scrambling. For that moment, the feeling of vengeance was too sweet to pass up. “Wouldn’t you like to know? But whenever I have a little girl, I think I’m naming her Amy.” With that, she hung up the phone.


End file.
